Five Ways John Winchester Didn't Die
by reading-is-in
Summary: Based on five quotations from the series.   Warning: character death  canon .


Five Ways John Winchester Didn't Die

Disclaimer: Characters from _Supernatural_ belong to Eric Kripke/CW. This fanfiction makes no profit.

A/N: Season 5 has traumatized me. To pieces. Intellectually I think it was the best season yet, but emotionally I am nostalgic for the old days…the days when conversations started with 'So, this killer truck…' ;). So this is like a mixed response to the unending tragedy of 5 combined with reminiscence for the family saga of early times. Plus I like doing the five things business.

See the end of the work for more notes.

1)'A little more tequila, a little less demon-hunting….' – Sam, 1x14, _Nightmare_

"If you wanna see him, come now."  
"Does he want to see me?"  
Silence.  
"Has he said that he wants to see me?"  
More silence. Then:  
"Look Sam, this is it, man. You really want the last words you said to the guy to be an obscenity?"

It was Sam's turn to falter. Jess, cross-legged on the bed with a book, gave him an inquiring eyebrow – _'Everything okay?'_ – and he nodded to her before turning the desk chair to face the window. Outside two freshmen are hurrying across the quad, their arms loaded with textbooks. The old trees rustle happily in a light breeze. Sam had never lied about his family, but he'd been sparse with the gory details for the sake of everyone's sanities. College was a new start for lots of people.

"I just don't know what there is to say to him," he told Dean in a low voice.  
"How about that you're sorry he's _dying_? You are sorry about that?"  
"Of course I am," Sam snapped. "I'm sorry he's dying, and I'm sorry he's dying like this. But if you're asking me to come and do the whole prodigal son deal, that isn't going to happen." _I stopped feeling like a son a long time ago_. He was glad he restrained himself from that last bit, true though it was, because Dean, for whatever reason, never stopped feeling like a son with all the messy, fucked-up duty that entailed when your father was a long-standing alcoholic. The official cause of death would be liver failure, compounded by anemia, hypertension and a tendency to stumble into traffic.

"I'm not asking you to do anything," Dean sounded old. Worn out. Sam did a quick mental reference check against his own age and realized that his brother was twenty-six. "I assumed you would _want_ to."  
Jess had gotten up and was hovering behind him, uncertain whether to leave and come over and put her arms around him. He made it easy by meeting her eyes: _'Come here, please' _. And she did.

"I'll think about it," Sam said into the phone.  
"Don't think too long." Dean hung up.

2)'He died like a hunter; he deserves to go out like one' – Dean, 4x19, _Jump the Shark._

It had a name: Azazel. It had never given that up, reluctant to letting him have even that much power….but he knew now. It couldn't hide that, once it was inside him. _Its_ hands on his steering wheel, _it's_ smirk on his face, _its_ eyes catching his reflection in the rearview mirror.  
_'Complicated, isn't it?' _It mocked him. _'Such prejudice against my poor, defenceless vessel. He was a chiropractor, you know. From Michigan. Liked to grow his own tomatoes. Wore out fast; but there's a poetic justice in it, doing things this way. We need to kill Dean, or we'll never have clear access to Sammy – no way better to harden him up for the rigors of Hell than to have him day at the quite literal hands of his own beloved father'._  
Against the terror, he nursed the rage.  
_Not today_ he told it, jerked the steering wheel violently left, and the truck veered from the road to the embankment to a blare of horns from behind. Azazel fought him ferociously as he struggled for the Colt; it was never far from the glove compartment. Raising the barrel of the gun to his temple, he watched the demon in the mirror. The last look he saw in his own eyes was the combination of the demon's rage, and his own calm satisfaction.

3)'That's great….that he went peacefully. It sure beats the alternative.' – Dean, 2x20, _What is and What Should Never Be_.

Mary held herself composed, not allowing herself to break down for the sake of her two small children. Dean, just turned four and unnaturally somber-faced, was too young to understand that daddy wasn't coming back, but aware that some bad thing had happened beyond even Mommy's control, and that if there was ever a time to be quiet and hold her hand this was it. he stood with her in the doorway, as she bid farewell to the last of the funeral guests at their small in-house reception. _'A beautiful service'_, they told her pointlessly. _'If you need anything…' _

Baby Sammy, at five months, was blissfully unaware that anything unusual had happened. He lay in his pram amiably, sucking fingers and staring with big brown eyes at the quietly murmuring guests, who passed him with pitying looks, saying quietly what a shame it was for the little boys to grow up without their father.

She couldn't help but feel that she'd failed them. She should've known. How could she have known? It had just been so sudden. The doctors had told her there must been an undiagnosed heart defect. No-one could've known. It just happened. And she had had him for ten extra years, she reminded herself bitterly. Always, at the back of her mind, the awareness of the yellow-eyed man and his promise and what she'd brought on herself. But she could not regret it. _'How could you leave me now?'_ She though angrily. There was so little time.  
"Mommy, Sammy wants us," Dean tugged on her hand. The baby was starting to fret and fuss, and she hadn't even noticed. One of the aunts had picked him up and was trying to soothe him, but he whining and reaching towards his family. Mary focused. Her husband was dead, but she still had her children, and whatever the price she would have to pay or battle she'd have to fight, she'd be ready for it. For their sake.

4)'People don't need a reason to kill each other […] I'm jello shots at a party.' – The Horseman War, 5x02, _Good God, Y'all _.

Seven months in Vietnam, most of that in the bush, and none of them left alive could exactly be called sane. John was dimly aware he would not be the same person, upon returning; that something had burned out of him in the fire and blood of the very first weeks which had so far left – nothing. He hoped that when he got home, was back with Mary, something would start to fill up that empty space again. He existed from one letter to the next, her careful sloping handwriting incongruous next to the unfamiliar postmarks. He hoarded them earnestly. Sustenance.

It was true what they told you: see enough bodies, dirt, smell enough blood, reverberate through enough explosions and one day….it stops affecting you like it once did. Like the death of unique persons.

No, they were none of them paragons of reason. But they held it together. They got the job done. For the most part. The problem with Jimmy Flanagan was that he was batshit crazy to begin with, even before he signed up. In the first week of basic training he'd told John that he came from a long line of proud Marines; then the next day, informed him he'd run away from his parents' travelling circus because his father, the Ringmaster, beat him. Sometimes he hummed to himself; nothing wrong with that, except he would intersperse it with lines from his favorite war movies, then point his index finger at you, squint and mutter _'pow-pow-pow'_. Back at home, he had held in the crazy long enough to make it through basic training, only letting it out in shorts bursts and starts around other low-ranking recruits.  
It was more or less inevitable that a real war would push him over the edge.  
So when John left the mess to find Jimmy alone, staring up at the heat-smeared stars, contemplating the barrel of his own gun, his immediate instinct was to stop and back away slowly. But it was too late. In a single flash of that catlike grace which had half-convinced John Jimmy had, once, been an acrobat, he hefted the gun and aimed it casually between John's eyes.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't kill you," Jimmy suggested.  
"Okay, calm down buddy," John raised his hands. "We're on the same side here, remember?"  
"Oh _sides_," Jimmy scoffed condescendingly. "What's sides got to do with it. Sides implies there's a reason, a purpose. _What are we doing here, _Johnny? That's what I'd like to know."  
"You know that ain't up to us." It was hardly the first time he'd heard the sentiment. "We're just trying to get through alive, Jimmy. So we can go back home."  
"How many them gooks you killed to date, Johnny? We call them that. But they ain't so different to us, really. Just some guys. Probably want to go home too."  
John thought it best not to answer that. It was dark, but he listened hard. Willing someone else to emerge from the mess. Jimmy didn't look insane. He looked glum, sympathetic, accepting of fate. His eyes had a distant sheen.  
"They don't get to go home," Jimmy told him sadly: "Maybe you shouldn't either," and fired.

5)'This is one little planet in one tiny solar system in a galaxy that's barely out of its diapers. I'm old […] Very old. So I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you.' – The Horseman Death, 5x21, _Two Minutes to Midnight_.

The old man sat by the balcony window, and looked at the desolate fields.

The demon was dead, and the war was over. Their war, and all the wars. The last war. His sons had done as he'd always known they would – no matter his railings against fate, against God, his attempts to remove his family and keep them safe after the death of Azazel….had it worked out, in the end? Was it alright? His children were going to outlive him, one way or another. They were changed – scarred – but who wasn't, in this age. Or the last one. The Earth still existed, with people on it.  
This was the order of things.  
The ground was grey, hostile. The sky was grey, flat. The trees were bare, branches like skeletons, dark frames against the sky. He was stiff: his whole body ached distantly, no specific site of pain, a hundred and one complaints from a hundred old wounds. He felt tired.  
A tree bough tapped on the window. At the end, where the branches were thinnest, a small shoot of green had begun to bud. Silent. Persistent. Imperative. Somewhere down below, someone was boiling a kettle on the gas hob. He could hear the whistle. A pause, then a door slammed, and somebody laughed.  
The old man closed his eyes.

-Fin-


End file.
